NEW ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Cody McCarver
Robert L. Doerschuk
May 09, 2008
In some ways, Cody McCarver's story isn't so different from those of other up-and-coming Country artists. He's a Southerner, born and raised in Dunlap, Tenn., near Chattanooga. He began playing piano in church at age 9 and by 17 had graduated to doing shows in honky tonks.
His path began to separate from the norm when he parlayed his self-taught instrumental skills into a two-year run on bass with Lynn Anderson's band. He stayed on the road after that, playing piano with Confederate Railroad. And now, with his self-titled debut album, produced by Csaba Petocz, released on PLC Records and distributed through Navarre, McCarver charts his own refreshing course.
His sense of humor is one thing that stands him out from the crowd. Some of the covers on Cody McCarver suggest a playful irreverence. This quality emerges in the straight-faced irony of his performance on "Red Flag," a guide to early warning signs in new relationships, the mock-epic "Redneck Love Gone Bad," his descent from "cocaine" to "Rogaine" on "Sunset Boulevard" and "Country Badass," whose deconstruction of macho stereotypes is familiar, hilarious and endearing.
But another side surfaces on "Through God's Eyes," co-written by McCarver. This meditation on the lives of the disadvantaged, conveyed with an almost conversational delivery that draws the audience into the heart of the story, reveals a narrative gift whose cultivation might be the next step in McCarver's ascension. The point being made here is that he's nowhere near the end of the journey he began back at the piano in that small-town church.
2008 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
His path began to separate from the norm when he parlayed his self-taught instrumental skills into a two-year run on bass with Lynn Anderson's band. He stayed on the road after that, playing piano with Confederate Railroad. And now, with his self-titled debut album, produced by Csaba Petocz, released on PLC Records and distributed through Navarre, McCarver charts his own refreshing course.
His sense of humor is one thing that stands him out from the crowd. Some of the covers on Cody McCarver suggest a playful irreverence. This quality emerges in the straight-faced irony of his performance on "Red Flag," a guide to early warning signs in new relationships, the mock-epic "Redneck Love Gone Bad," his descent from "cocaine" to "Rogaine" on "Sunset Boulevard" and "Country Badass," whose deconstruction of macho stereotypes is familiar, hilarious and endearing.
But another side surfaces on "Through God's Eyes," co-written by McCarver. This meditation on the lives of the disadvantaged, conveyed with an almost conversational delivery that draws the audience into the heart of the story, reveals a narrative gift whose cultivation might be the next step in McCarver's ascension. The point being made here is that he's nowhere near the end of the journey he began back at the piano in that small-town church.
2008 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
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